Pretty fun game, had to replay it for my Pokémon series re-playthrough I'm doing this year because I haven't replayed it since I was about 12

Not gonna say much but a good change of pace from the original franchise, all battles are double battles and you have a set limit of Pokémon you can use for team building.

Towards the end of the game some of the level jumps can be really absurd for no reason, like c'mon bro why am I facing level 60 Pokémon when my team is like 45 at best. Catching Shadow Pokémon in this game.. kinda sucks sometimes, they only have one move which is basically a crappier version of Take Down and you cant use more moves unless you unlock them. A lot of the Pokémon options kinda suck (since most of them are Gen 2 Pokémon which are known to be bad) but I will say if you plan a proper team out while playing this game it might be a little more fun. I'd personally recommend using at least one of the Legendary dogs, Flygon, Misdreavus, Typhlosion/Feraligatr/Ampharos (depending on which dog you use,) and Espeon if this is your first time playing the game as they'll make the game slightly easier since like I said, very annoying artificial difficulty.

Side note: I love Umbreon but in this game it SUCKS, seriously it learns like no good moves and being behind in levels constantly doesn't help either.

Overall I'd say worth playing once but this replay definitely hurt my nostalgia for this game.

As the years go on ever since Pokémon Red and Green’s release in 1996 the Pokémon franchise was getting increasingly popular as an RPG franchise. It had lots of cool things to do whether you were focussed on battling, training, or as the series’ old phrase used to go “catching them all.” But more recently, the franchise has had a noticeably large decline in the quality of games ever since the release of Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon in 2017. More recently for me, the straw that broke the camel’s back had to have been the very lazily and uninteresting remakes of the beloved first games of the fourth generation, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today, I’m here to talk about a mod that takes an already beloved game also in the Sinnoh region that being Pokémon Platinum, but also completely revitalizes it and revamps it to the point where it almost feels like a different thing entirely, and in my opinion is a much better “game” than anything Game Freak has done in the last few years. This is Pokémon Renegade Platinum.


The Story: Changed but Not Ruined
I’ll get this one out of the way since this one has the least amount of changes, the plot of this game is of course, mostly the same as Pokémon Platinum, however there are some moments that were surprisingly altered in-order to give the player more exploration while also being able to fit in more of the additional battles that the game has to offer. For example, in the original Platinum you aren’t able to access the snowy tundra of route 216 until you have defeated the sixth gym. Well, not only are you able to access this area from the second gym now, but you’re also required to go there for some story stuff regarding that gym leader. Another example would be the addition of the Pokémon Mansion quest on Route 212, where you go through a multitude of Team Galactic battles in order to receive a special event Pokémon once this part of the game has been completed. So while the story is mostly the game, the changes make the story flow a little bit better as opposed to just speeding through it mindlessly.

The Gameplay: Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions
Have you ever felt like the Sinnoh region didn’t have enough fire-types? Well I sure do. Instead of being forced into picking Chimchar as your starter Pokémon or using a Rapidash even though you don’t like it, now every single fire-type until Generation 4 is available to catch one way or another before the Pokémon League. Actually, most Pokémon available in this generation are available to be caught before the Pokémon League with the exception of some legendaries such as Heatran and Regigigas. Want a nice Fire/Fighting Pokémon like Blaziken on your team? Perfect, all Hoenn starters are available from an NPC found early on in the game, and the same for the Johto and Kanto starters as well. Getting tired of having a Luxray on your team? Go ahead and use a Manectric instead. This game allows you to have insane amounts of diverse team building to the point where once you’re at the Elite Four, you can practically run almost any Pokémon you want on your team so easily, and the best part is, you don’t even need to worry about things such as trade evolutions if you wanna use something like a Gengar or a Politoed, you can simply use the required item on them in-order to be able to use that Pokémon, which in my opinion is way better than Game Freak locking some evolutions behind trades because some of us don’t have ways to get them. In terms of the way that the actual Pokémon Battles flow, not only are there extra boss battles such as Lucas/Dawn being a secondary rival or being surprised by an Elite Four member just before the 3rd gym (seriously, fuck you Elite Four Aaron) regular trainers will be increasingly more challenging and will often have set strategies in mind that are designed to counter every Pokémon type, along with all gym leaders using six Pokémon and having strategies of their own. This game is HARD, and will show you no mercy if you do not adapt to it. A good example is the alteration of the final battle against Cyrus of Team Galactic, in an 6v8 Pokémon battle in which you will first do a double battle against the legendary Pokémon Dialga and Palkia, but then will battle you with a full team of Pokémon right after. Fortunately, the creator of this mod Drayano has made a document file with all of the changes included in the game, and when I recommend using it, I mean you should really fucking use it. You must be prepared for every single battle you come across, and it’s more than likely you won’t have one exact team until very late in the game. I remember I had two teams until the 6th gym, where one was used specifically for routes and one was used specifically for boss battles until I was able to build my full proper team I would be using for the rest of the game. This game shows absolutely no mercy, if you don’t prepare you will be punished for it. Think of it like Dark Souls, if you didn’t upgrade your gear enough or your stats properly, you’ll lose to a boss. However, if you go out of your way to prepare for a boss and learn what they’ll do against you, you’ll be able to beat them without as much of a hassle. That’s pretty much the same case here, against every boss, and even some trainers, you should have some sort of strategy in mind because you will be shot down without any sort of planning or preparation. But as mentioned before this game allows you to get tons of great Pokémon early on allowing you to complete these sets of obstacles, and with the addition of things such as the Fairy type which hadn’t released until Generation 6, Chansey/Blissey trainers to grind the levels of your Pokémon, EV Training so that you can help train the specific stats of your Pokémon (If you don’t EV train you’ll have a hard time, trust me and do it lol) along with being able to use TMs more than once unlike the original Platinum, the diversity and possibilities for your run of this game is likely infinite. For the first time in a Pokémon playthrough I made a team that was perfectly optimized to have weather control at all times and while also being insanely defensive so that I could take some hits and properly counter anything I was having trouble with. This game rewards you for exploiting your opponent and that’s something I’ve never felt in a Pokémon game before.


The Pokémon League: New team, new strategies.
Lastly, I would like to talk briefly about how the Pokémon League works in this game, as compared to regular Pokémon games it’s a bit different. The Elite Four and Champion Cynthia in this game have four possible teams that they can all use, and every run of the Pokémon League will be different. For example, each trainer will have Team A, B, C, and D. The first E4 Aaron may run Team A, Bertha may run Team B, Flint may run Team C, Lucian may run Team D, and Champion Cynthia may run team A. Let’s say you end up losing to Cynthia and have to restart; this time, you may fight Aaron with Team C, Bertha with Team D, Flint with Team B, Lucian with Team A, and Cynthia with Team C, and so on and so forth, so the combinations of each Elite Four + Champion run will be completely different from the last one, and every person will have a different experience fighting them, so like I said, prepare for each of these teams the best you can and push through with any strategy you deem worthy of beating the game with, you WILL lose battles often and you WILL have to go back to the drawing board if your team for that boss fight isn’t working out, but it’s all part of the challenge and like I said earlier with all the resources that the game gives you, I’m sure everyone who plays this game can find a way to beat it.

Conclusion: Is it worth playing?
Well, it’s not as concrete as that, sadly. If you like me were bummed out about how poorly the Sinnoh remakes weren’t properly remade and just felt like a lazy way to rerelease the game onto modern platforms without the innovations of the newer games and only being able to have such an undiverse team (because let’s be real, odds are you, me, and every one else probably have at least one or two Pokémon in common on our Diamond/Pearl/Platinum teams) and want to actually feel like you’re being challenged and forced to use actual strategies in boss battles instead of running the same cookie-cutter 6 Pokémon team for the whole game, I would recommend playing this 100%. It’s a breath of fresh air and I found myself surprisingly playing it a lot more than I thought I would. I ended up logging about 40 hours by the end of the game and was honestly really happy and fulfilled finishing it, because of how rewarding yet challenging the game was, I’ll definitely be replaying this game if I ever wanna playthrough Platinum again because of how much it made me feel like a kid again, but with the knowledge I have as an adult with years of experience with this franchise. So if you want something different, diverse, challenging, and nostalgic I’d recommend this game 100%.

Oh, and if you wanted to know what Pokémon I used to beat the game; Garchomp, Politoed, Umbreon, Gyarados, Rotom-Fridge, and Crobat.

What is a game? An enjoyable little pile of amusement. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is the embodiment of this statement. Saying what this game gets right is very hard to do, because of how much there is. Whether it be the gameplay, the environment, the character or the lore, this game does it all. It’s insanely fun to swing around your sword as a half-human half vampire, and levelling up to move through the constantly changing area of Castlevania (Dracula’s Castle) while re-acquiring your old gear and moving up through the level ranks in order to reclaim your former glory is one of the most motivating things I’ve ever seen in a game.

As stated before, after a small callback with Richter Belmont and the final battle of “Castlevania: Rondo of Blood” which happens a couple years before the events of the game, you are instantly placed in the hands of the main character, Adrian Fahrenheit Țepeș, son of Dracula known as Alucard, who had previously made his first appearance in “Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse” on the NES all those years ago alongside Trevor Belmont (or in the recently released animated adaptation on Netflix.) Because of the fact that it’s already established that Alucard is a powerful force and a strong-willed character, as soon as he wakes up from his 300 year slumber you are already equipped with the strongest gear in the game, but not long after you enter the castle and running into Death (the character) you are instantly ripped away of your powerful gear, to search for the reason why Alucard has woken up and why Richter has not made his appearance to slay his family’s biggest calamity.

Onto the gameplay, now that you have nothing it’s up to you to make your way up to figure out what the hell is going on. You will come across all sorts of enemies and bosses that you may be familiar with from Castlevania and other types of mythology constantly ambushing you and putting you on your toes. As you slowly make your way up through levels and find new equipment to attack and defend yourself with, you have to make sure you explore as much as you can, because some of the bosses (I’m looking at you Maria Renard) can be a bit challenging at some points. My one problem with the game is probably the inverted castle. Although I don’t mind it as much as other people, it can be a bit draining and you may lose some motivation to play through the game every now and then. But I do really like this game, it's fun, it's simple, it knows what it's doing and it's hard to put down. Yuri Lowenthal as Alucard is also fun as hell.

4.5/5

Metroid Dread. Wow, what a game. To start things off, I had never touched a Metroid game outside of a bit of NES, Super, and Prime 1. This game was by far more fun than those 3 by a lot. It sets a spectacular standard for an expansive genre and allows itself to spread its wings so freely that it comes off as a very welcoming game right from the get go. I won’t be talking much about the story and more so the gameplay instead.

This Metroidvania definitely surpasses its predecessors in many aspects. It allows you to get a grip of everything going on right from the start, it makes you want to play it for hours on end because of the fact that it's immensely engaging through its interactive environment and an easily explorable nature that makes backtracking not as much of a pain as you think it is, yet still retaining a classic Metroidvania feel that could honestly age as well as something such as Symphony of the Night in about 10 years time. The bosses and enemies you find along the way are fairly balanced, and anytime you die or are frustrated with something in this game, 99.9% of the time it’s on yourself, so don’t hate the game this time and hate the player. You will definitely learn from every battle you come across and use your new knowledge to your advantage in every fight, nothing in this game should be difficult except for your own limitations.

I was personally hesitant on spending 80$ (CAD) on this game due to its length, we’re so used to JRPG’s feeding us with hours of content that this game didn’t seem worth it for me since I thought I’d beat it in a weekend and never touch it again, I was wrong. It took me about 10 hours over the span of two weeks or so as I played with mostly any free time I had. This game is absolutely worth the price, and if you’re hesitant on picking it up, I’d definitely say just go for it.
9/10 for me and game of the year so far.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is an immensely action packed, immersive, heartachingly game set in 1899, just before the age of cowboys and outlaws is about to come to the end with the turn of the 20th century just around the corner.

The story follows a gang after a failed bank robbery on which they are currently on the run to survive being pursued by law enforcement due to their previously stated actions. As they struggle to survive in several changes of climate, settings, population and much more, they still have to keep going to get the money they need to live out the rest of their days peacefully and retire. I will avoid to say much else about the story, however it's definitely one that will nonetheless never be forgotten and is one for the ages.

Onto the gameplay; Rockstar Games takes the familiarity of the previous game and turns it up to the maximum. Travelling from one location to another via a horse allows you to explore the world to its full capability, and really take in this fictional version of 19th century America. The world itself is great, and feels so connected. I recall one time I acquired a bounty on which I was given the objective to hunt down a fugitive and bring him back dead or alive. I ended up killing the poor bastard, and then went on to see him being given a funeral not too long after. This is one of many examples of how Rockstar paid attention to detail in this game, and how you really do feel like you’re a part of the game’s world. The last thing I would like to mention is the gunplay. This might be a mixed bag for some people, as I know many who adore it and others who detest it. Personally, I felt like it was fairly good, however certain weapons like snipers and bows definitely feel a bit clunky and are a bit difficult to use (on a controller at least.) The game brings back the “deadeye” ability from the first game, which allows you to lock onto multiple targets and shoot them all at once, think McCree’s ultimate from Overwatch.

So for a quick tl;dr, this game has a strong story with an likeable cast of characters, with a very explorative and immersive open world, along with some fairly decent gameplay. Overall I would score it at a 4.5/5 star or a 9 out of 10. Solid game and I would recommend this as one of the best introductions into any single player open world game.